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Summary: After his mother's death, Spencer must begin his senior year of high school feeling lost and empty. Friendships are lost, found and rekindled; his family struggles to adjust to new changes. And somewhere, somehow things fall into place. INDEFINITE HIATUS.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is an experiment of sorts that came to me out of nowhere one day. I don't really know how it'll work, since I've got so many details that need to be precise and coherent for everything in the plot to come together correctly. There's a couple of focuses in this story, as the summary might suggest, and more than likely things will jump back and forth between them until they finally connect, but not in a crazy abstract way, I promise. This is just a setup chapter - not much is happening now, but the plot will soon be speeding along with all the grace of a freight train. I'll do my best to make it work **.

He had always been a little eccentric. He still smeared glue on the back of his hand and peeled it off like he was molting in order to connect with his inner reptile, and he still always had to have some part of his body in motion, whether it was his hands scribbling down haphazard (and often unfinished) notes in class or sketching epic Godzilla-esque battles in their margins. He still liked to compose silly little ditties that were usually about what he was doing at the time with horribly forced rhymes. A lot of things about him hadn't really changed over the summer, but then again, a lot of things had.

His eyes, normally bright and animated regardless of how he felt, had become lackluster, and so had the emotions inside him. He used to be boisterous and excitable, but now he had become somewhat reticent and, as his grandfather had noted in a conversation not meant for his ears, timid. Spencer Shay, _timid_.

Had his mother not died less than a month before, the notion would have been laughable. Spencer didn't laugh much anymore, either, and his lips could still only imitate a smile.

He woke up that morning, the third of September, with the same hollow feeling in his chest cavity that he hardly noticed anymore, and he'd gone downstairs to find his grandfather sipping coffee and his younger sister munching on a bowl of Cheerios. The scene was so _inexplicably normal_ that he perceived for a moment himself being the puzzle piece with the awkward edges whose place had been forgotten after everything came apart.

"Spencer," his sister called out, the 'r' in his name coming out like a rounded 'w', and her petite face lighting up in a smile that was eerily familiar and left him taking longer to respond than he should have.

"Morning, kiddo." It occurred to him that her presence was an oddity at this hour.

"Your sister will be attending very her first day of school this morning," his grandad announced with a prideful tone as though he could see inside his head. He set a piece of toast and a glass of milk in front of him. Though Spencer didn't care much for crunchy bread, he found that he was good at keeping his body on autopilot.

"I'm going to _kindergarten_," his sister informed him in her best grown-up voice, and Spencer thought he saw her sit up a little straighter.

_Kindergarten_.

How had he forgotten? They'd just gone shopping for school supplies for the both of them last week - his baby sister had clutched her list of essentials like it was the most important document in the world, and he'd helped her dutifully cross out the items once they'd been found.

_How_ had he _forgotten_?

"Kindergarten," he repeated to himself aloud, and his voice cracked in between the third and fourth syllables, like the word got stuck on its way out. He coughed to cover it up. "Wow," he said when he found the strength. "You're getting _old_."

"No, _you're _old," she giggled, her naiveté a sucker punch in the gut that struck him often nowadays. "_I'm _only four."

"What does that make me?" their grandad wanted to know, his fingers combing through his granddaughter's hair, and suddenly Spencer found his toast to be of more interest. When it was gone, he wet his index finger to pick up the crumbs. They hustled and bustled around him, his sister's tiny feet making tiny _clack clack _sounds in her new white Mary Janes that her grandad insisted made her look like a princess.

"Spencer," she said, tugging on his arm and transporting him back to reality. "C'mon. Grandad wants to take a picture."

She led him to the door where they were to stand, and something reminiscent to hurt crawled in behind his ribs when he had to get behind her on his knees to accommodate her short stature. He let his chin rest on the top of her head, gently, barely. _God_, she was tiny. So tiny, he thought. It was like seeing her for the first time all over again, except instead of being a screaming red-faced newborn with a misshaped head, she was a little girl in a brand new yellow sundress, beaming like she could take on the world.

"Smile, now."

He licked his lips and recalled that one picture day in Junior High, a bunch of older kids got in trouble for yelling 'sex' as pictures were being taken. When his photo got developed, his mother had remarked that he had never smiled so brightly in front of a camera in his life. He never told her why.

"Wonderful. You two are adorable together." Their grandad's eyes twinkled as he turned the camera off. Spencer's lips hadn't moved.

"I'm going to the bathroom," he told no one in particular, and his grandad said something about waiting in the car.

He had always been fond of small enclosed spaces as long as he was alone, and the bathroom was the smallest and most private enclosed space available with hardly a few feet between the toilet and the sink. But somewhere along the line growing up he became all arms and legs and that little bubble of space he used to fit perfectly in could hardly be called a crawl space anymore. He knew that, but wasn't sure why he bothered to try and jam his gangly self in there anyway until his knees jabbed into the knobs of the cabinet and his back was pressed against the toilet bowl because then he had to spend about three minutes just easing back up again. It was a good thing he didn't actually need to use the bathroom.

His grandad's voice proceeded three quick raps on the door. "Spencer? Are you all right in there?"

"I'm fine, Grandad. I'll be right out."

He flushed the toilet, lathered his hands at the sink, and scrubbed for an unnecessary amount of time before he rubbed his hands against his jeans to dry them. He was hardly surprised to find his grandad still waiting outside the door.

"You're sure you're okay." It was a statement, not a question riddled with concern - a refreshing change. Spencer had answers on the tip of his tongue, the ones he seemed to be always wanting to say. _No. I feel sick. I'm tired. I'm so, so tired. Leave me alone. Don't ever leave me._

"I'm fine," he answered instead, the usual. His grandad's sigh was melancholic.

"It gets better with time, Spence. I think the new school year will be good for you, especially since it's senior year. It'll give you new things to focus on. More reasons to get out of the house. Maybe you can join a sport."

"Yeah, doubt it on that last one," Spencer mumbled, biting his lip. "Can we go?"

"All right, Spence. All right."

* * *

In some kind of crazy way, at the start of every school year, Spencer found himself having missed Ridgeway High School. The hugeness of the campus was overwhelming to see at first, especially with so many students in a concentrated area, and if there was one thing he could recall from his freshman year, it was the perpetual sense of claustrophobia in the hallways and the constant sensation of others breathing down his neck. Throughout the years, little had changed other than his height, and he took comfort in seeing the familiar sight of hundreds of students milling by the school swapping schedules and catching up with acquaintances.

The first day of school was always the loneliest. So many groups all congregated together, and he had never once fit into any of them. He could look around for people he knew all that he wanted, but they would just make small talk with him and move on so their friends wouldn't stand there feeling out of place when in fact it was he who didn't belong.

He adjusted the straps on his backpack, then untied and tied his shoe again. Anything to make him look busy. Anything that would help him pretend that he wasn't the lone wolf among hundreds of packs.

"Spencer!" A voice called out to him, and through instinct he turned. A girl with blonde, frizzy hair bounded up to him, her curls bouncing on her shoulders, and he almost wished he'd ignored her.

"Liza," he acknowledged. "How are you." It wasn't really a question, and he hadn't really meant it to be, but she answered anyway.

"Oh, I've been _great_ - me and PJ spent every weekend at the lake together this summer. I had to teach him how to swim - can you imagine? A big, macho man like him unable to handle himself in the water." She threw her head back and laughed like it was absolutely hilarious, and it should have been but he just couldn't join her. "So what about you?" she wanted to know when she'd stopped. "What have you been up to?"

"Not much," he answered, the truth.

"Oh, well, it's good that you had relaxing time, then. That's what summers are for - kicking back before the mountains of work start again."

Before he had to respond, a pair of gargantuan arms wrapped around Liza's waist, pulling her backwards into their respective owner.

"P_J_," she grumbled trying to pull herself free. "You're interrupting my conversation." She craned her neck to glare up at him and it was kind of interesting to see them together like that because Liza was only like five feet tall and PJ was her hulking brute of a boyfriend that had to be close to two feet taller. His chuckle sounded like a growl, and Spencer got an image of the big bad wolf licking his chops when he bent down to make their mouths meet. _The better to taste you with, my dear_.

"I should go," he said as they broke apart. They both appeared to have forgotten he was there. Her started towards the double doors, up the concrete steps and had just grasped the door when a hand caught his elbow. "Spence, wait."

Liza stood there shuffling her feet and rubbing her lips together. She couldn't look at him. "I...I heard that your mom died. I know that she was sick for a really long time and...I don't know. I just wanted to say something to you."

He waited, but for once there wasn't a surplus of words to drown him out. She appeared lost, and her eyes pleaded with him to say something.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay." And he stepped through the door.

He could feel her eyes on his back through the tinted window, watching him go.

* * *

The rest of the school day passed in a blurry mess of bells and winding hallways. He got lost twice, once on the way to a classroom he already knew, and was late to every single one of them. School started too early and ended too late - his teachers were lucky he was even dressed, let alone lugging his bag full of binders and textbooks on his back.

Lunch was his solace. It was the quietest period of his day, even at the peak of socialization for the average school day. Everyone was still talking, of course, but at least at lunch he couldn't be certain of what they were saying.

Not that he didn't have an idea. Phrases such as 'leukemia', 'just about a month ago' and 'the poor boy' had been floating around the halls and classrooms only to dissipate when he got close. They all knew. Of course they knew. What had he expected? He chose a table alone, isolated - might as well make it easier for them all to see him - and ate the bologna sandwich that his grandad had thrown together while he'd showered and dressed. It was dry and had no taste; he'd have to mention the mayonnaise next time.

There was no sign of Liza at all for the entire duration of lunch. Not that he looked for her - why would he look for her? He wondered if she was avoiding him, if maybe she was sorry, but he couldn't find anything for her to be sorry about.

* * *

Spencer had always liked art. He liked the way you could never quite go wrong with it because there _was _no right or wrong. Not like with the ovens in his cooking class - one could go very, _very_ wrong with some of those settings, apparently. Art was more about expression and not instruction, and where it was his last class of the day, he was ready for something a little more open-ended.

He'd forgotten the _smells_ of an art room, of dried paint and clay, ink and charcoal, and just about any other tool of the trade. The scent almost knocked him over in the good kind of way, the kind of way took the tension that was wound like a spring inside him and eased it to loosen up.

He had never been much for large social circles, and it had never mattered to him that much that he was not really close to anyone, but he would have thought that after four years at Ridgeway, he would know more faces. Most of them have appeared to be foreign, save for a flicker of familiarity that he possibly fabricated on the occasion that someone approached him and said they were sorry for his loss. It had happened six-and-a-half times, the half being when a girl had gotten out of her seat in English and met eyes with him but had stopped halfway to his seat when the bell rang and Miss Briggs slammed a ruler on her desk to get the class in order.

It was sort of unfortunate that he managed to remember that evil incarnate of a woman, but names and faces of his classmates mingled in his head, unmatched.

Some kids in the corner of the room began to discuss in heated whispers the rumor that the new art teacher for that year went into labor the previous week and that they'd be stuck with a crotchety old woman who had just gotten out of rehab after experimenting with prescription drugs. That proved to be half-true - she was definitely crotchety and old. No one was going to ask her to affirm the second part to that rumor. She didn't have much to say to them except that every art supply they could possibly need was in a cabinet at the back of the room and that they could keep things to a dull roar if they cleaned up after themselves two or three minutes before the bell.

One by one by one, people began sifting through the tools of the trade, and he shifted from foot to foot as though he was impatient with the slowness of the way the line moved, when in actuality he hadn't a clue what he was looking for, a revelation that left him staring blankly at the cabinet's contents long after everyone had chosen a seat and gotten to work.

The immaculacy of plain white paper eventually won him over, and he helped himself to a few sheets. Everyone else had started in, and he stood there with suddenly clammy hands as the realization set in that he was going to have to sit down amongst complete strangers who may not have been strangers at all.

He eventually settled down at a round table adjacent to a kid who may or may not have had a face beneath his shaggy, mahogany hair. Spencer watched as the profile of a dragon took shape across the page in no time at all (just as he used to be able to do, a part of him dares recall).

By the end of the period, the faceless kid had drawn three dragons and a knight to fight them. There were no marks on his papers at all, but he crumpled them up and threw them away anyway just for good riddance.


	2. Chapter 2

Spencer always did okay in school. Not good, not bad...just okay. B's and C's, right smack dab in the middle of the grading spectrum, smack dab in the middle of his essays and homework and tests in thick red marks. He was okay with that - his papers weren't bloody when he got them back, nor were they covered in empty praise that only his par - _guardians_ would take to heart.

His grandad had always thought differently though. He'd clip out the names from the honor roll in the paper, and he'd search down through the columns for Shay-comma-Spencer with more diligence than he ever paid to his crossword puzzles. (And his grandad did love crossword puzzles; he had stacks of crossword dictionaries with torn, yellowed pages in the corner of his living room, and there was almost always a pencil behind his ear in the event that an answer struck him while he was making his favorite fried bologna sandwich for lunch.) And if he found his grandson among the hundreds of names in the high honors section, there was no doubt it would be highlighted and hung on the refrigerator.

"You see this?" he'd say when his family went visiting to Yakima, and he'd point as though the neon yellow blended in with the dull gray of the paper. "This is what happens when smart young men apply themselves." Beaming, he'd catch his grandson's eye, and when the two were alone, he'd ruffle his hair, hug him with a scary amount of force for a man his age, and murmur "I knew you could do it, son."

Spencer had always understood that his grandad was just trying to complement him, and there was never anything wrong with that. He had to work for good grades, and this kind of thing meant achievement. Beyond the embarrassment of being treated like a child, there was always a bit of pride. Not that he'd say so when he got older. Of course not.

It didn't make sense. Intelligence was supposed to improve with age, yes. But this was pushing it. This wasn't right.

The circled 'A' at the top of the history quiz he'd gotten back defied all logistics of his mind, but there was nothing wrong with it. Not according to what his teacher said when he stayed after class to check. He'd said he'd never been so befuddled by a student's insistence to get a C before. His words, not Spencer's. (Spencer did add the word 'befuddled' to his mental vocabulary, though.)

He stared down at the quiz, just as he'd been doing between classes all day. Blinking at it didn't make it change, and neither did rubbing his eyes.

A.

He should have been proud. He should have been smiling on the inside and out.

He should have asked his little sister what the letter was. She knew her letters perfectly, as long as they were uppercase. She'd have been be glad to tell him.

He should have shown Grandad.

Instead, he shoved the quiz in a drawer, letting the ends wrinkle.

Numbers and letters were only more than numbers and letters when people made them that way.

* * *

For a while after his mother's passing, people would send them cards. Hallmark after Hallmark would fall out of the mailbox, and he used to count them. Sometimes they outnumbered the bills and junk mail, and when he compared the thickness of all of them combined to the thickest envelopes, they'd be equal. He would wonder if that meant there was more good in the world than evil, but then as the coffee table began to fill and sappy messages peeked out from behind nooks and crannies, he decided they were each despicable in their own little way. So when his grandad left to buy groceries, he gathered them up in a trash bag and left them to be disposed of the next day when the garbage truck came.

He was washing the dust off of the coffee table when his grandad returned, his granddaughter in tow. Neither of them said a word about it, but dinner was exceptionally quiet. His baby sister asked at one point why they were mad, and he said, "I'm not mad. Are you?" in reference to his grandad across the table. There was no answer, but he made an offer to play Candy Land with her, and all was forgotten. For a while.

"Spencer, how come there aren't any postcards for mommy anymore?" she asked out of the blue a month later. She was coloring a picture of a teddy bear for _kindergarten_ at the kitchen table, and it was coming along quite nicely. The red bow around his neck was a nice touch if he did say so himself.

"Your teddy bear has a pretty bow," he told her.

She thanked him. "But that wasn't the answer to my question." Four-year-olds were determined little things. He almost asked her to repeat herself, but that would be like saying he didn't hear her, which was like lying. And he was a horrible liar who didn't take kindly to people who lied to his siblings, even if they were little white ones.

"Because...because people can't say 'I'm sorry' forever, and so they have to move on."

_Like us,_ he decided not to say.

The little hand that was so carefully moving inside the lines like he taught her (because he was the _artist_ in the family and every good artist had to have an apprentice) stopped.

"Because she's not coming home." She looked surprised to hear herself admit it, even though she'd been told, even though there were always gentle reminders administered by him or their grandad to stop her from relying on false hopes.

When minutes passed and there were no more words between them, she picked up her red crayon and went back to work. But he could see what was coming in the way her knuckles went white and her bear's bow was getting to be much darker. She didn't resist when he turned her chair, outstretched up for his embrace even though her arms were so small she'd never reach on her own. Her face pressed into the nape of his neck; there were hot droplets spilling down his skin, but there were no ugly, horrifying sounds muffled into his shoulder like at the funeral. Her chest shuddered against his, but he rubbed her back in slow, rhythmic movements until there were nothing but tiny gasps now and then grazing his cheek.

He put her down when her breathing evened out, and she ran a wrist along her bloodshot eyes before pressing her hand against the paper to get the rest of her bear's bow as dark as she'd managed to make it moments before.

Like any concerned guardian, their grandad was quick to ask what happened when he saw her tearstained face.

"I colored outside the lines," she said after a while, and Spencer's chest started to hurt.

* * *

The kids in his art class were wrong - they weren't going to be stuck with an old woman as an art teacher, and their teacher hadn't into labor before the start of the school year. In fact, that wasn't even anatomically possible because their art teacher was a man named Mr. Westfield who'd just been out with a sick child. He insisted that formalities felt unnecessary in this case, and that they should all just call him Rick. It was painfully obvious that Rick didn't want to let go of the seventies, with his overlong sandy hair held back into a ponytail and his washed-out tie-dye t-shirt having seen better days, but Spencer was okay with that. He was a free-spirited kind of guy who believed in trying different mediums of art supplies in order to find one's niche, and that direct classroom instruction defeated the purpose.

"It disrupts the flow, man," he stated breezily at the end of his introduction and let his students stare blankly at him for several seconds before succumbing to laugher. "I've always wanted to say that in my classes," he explained before perching his huge, orange-tinted sunglasses atop his head. Nobody laughed.

Spencer decided he kind of liked Rick. They were on the same page as far as humor went, anyway - funny inside their heads, but not so much to other people.

"Well, this is awkward," he muttered, scratching his head. "I should have listened to my wife."

Forgotten muscles curled into an expression of slight amusement, and Rick turned his way with a slight laugh. "At least somebody appreciates my jokes."

It took Spencer fifteen minutes to realize that he had smiled, and the rest of the day for him to realize he couldn't remember the last time he'd done so without it being entirely false.

His artistic muse, however, still eluded him. He blamed the kid with no face (and still no name; he'd zoned out during attendance, only realizing that the kid's name had been called when he said "Here.") because he was going right to town with those dragon pictures again, this time coloring and shading way better than he could have ever done with a twelve-pack of Crayola colored pencils.

Meanwhile, his new papers were crisp and unmarked as ever, his pencil hovering just inches from their surface. He'd been telling himself that once he made the first mark it would get better, that his artistic _chi_ would start flowing once he touched familiar territory...but he couldn't do it. He was so used to having a clear picture in his head when it came to art that starting with a blank slate with his mind just as spotless seemed just _wrong_.

The pencil was placed down in front of him with a soft _clink_ at the same time a knock sounded at the door. Rick, who was painting on a canvas that he'd set up next to his desk, went to answer it, unaware that there was a streak of orange running from the center of his cheek down to his chin. Spencer kind of wondered how he managed that.

He reverted his eyes down at the table even though he was pretty sure if he focused any harder than he had been his brain would explode and bits and pieces of it would escape out his ears.

"...just made a transfer. I'm new here. To Ridgeway, not just this class. I couldn't find the room."

"It happens. I just started teaching here this morning, so I'm learning the ropes just as much as you. Come in and take a seat." Rick smiled in his lopsided way and backed up to let in the visitor in. Spencer's back was to the door, and he couldn't see it in his peripheral vision, but the eyes of his classmates showed slight interest. _New kid_, they seemed to say.

New kid was obviously uncomfortable, but he wasn't one of the skittish types that cowered under their gazes. He looked a little lost, sure, but not really scared, and Spencer admired that. High school students had a way of eating people alive if they let them. He pretended that there was something engrossing on his paper as to prevent more discomfort for the new kid when he sat down across from him even though he was just as curious as everyone else in the room at the moment.

"Staring at the paper won't make lines appear," he said after an excruciating silence. Spencer took that as an indicator for him to glance up.

"Your eyes are really intense," he noted out loud because his mouth didn't always have a filter and that happened to be the first thing he noticed. They probably stuck out because he was kind of pale and his hair was black as could be, but they _were_. His mind screamed, _emerald_, which, last time he checked was only a color reserved for jewelry.

And the kid's face screamed _creep_, which happened a lot when the filter on his mouth disappeared. Damn.

"Indeed," he replied in a drawn-out baritone, the kind of voice people used when they didn't know what to make of a situation other than the fact that it made them uneasy. He rummaged through his backpack - _probably so he could avoid eye contact_, Spencer assumed, a bit angry with himself.

"I didn't know you could talk," remarked the faceless boy without tearing his concentration away from his meticulous coloring. At least he was unfazed about it. (Spencer almost asked him to look up and push his hair off to the side, but he'd save that for another day.) He mumbled some gibberish just so he could say he responded somehow and then prepared himself mentally for exile because he was sure that it would happen now that the whole class probably thought he was a freak.

His exile lasted approximately fifteen seconds, after which point the new kid decided to ask, "Hey, uh, can I borrow a pencil?" Spencer waited a few seconds just to be sure it was him he was asking, then nodded. "Yeah, hang on."

When handed a newly-sharpened pencil, the new kid thanked him, and Spencer figured they were both trying to pretend that what had just happened hadn't happened at all. That was more than okay.

"So are we assigned stuff in here, or do we just kinda roll with it?" he wanted to know, eying Rick as he painted intently.

"We just go with the flow and with whatever inspires us." Spencer shrugged. "Rick wants us to explore different artistic mediums but go with whatever we like and just have fun with it."

"He lets you call him 'Rick'?" The new kid seemed mildly intrigued. "That's cool."

"Yeah, he's kind of a cool guy."

Rick gave him a small smile and a thumbs-up from across the room, and Spencer returned them to the best of his ability even though the happy expression still felt awkward on his face.

"So I'm assuming you have a name," he said once he returned his attention to the new kid.

"Actually, I don't," he informed. "My parents couldn't agree on a name for me, so I came home from the hospital without one and they never did give one to me. Most people just say 'hey kid', and I respond automatically."

"...Well that has to suck," Spencer concluded because there was no other way to describe it. Gees.

He laughed. "I'm just kidding. You're the first kid to believe me on that one. My name is actually Thom. Thom Reed. I just hate the name Thom."

Spencer's face began to heat faintly. "Oh. Well, Thom Reed, _my _name is actually Spencer Shay. I'm just gullible like that, I guess...and sometimes I can be socially awkward."

"I'll remember not to use sarcasm around you, then," Thom told him with a nod. Then, lowering his voice, he added, "And believe me, the eye thing was one of the most interesting compliments I've ever received. If it was a compliment."

"It was," Spencer confirmed, even though it felt weird to put it that way. But it made Thom smile in a way that said he didn't find him to be a creep at all, and something like relief washed over his insides for the first time in a while.

* * *

**AN: I'd just like to reassure you all that this story isn't going to be riddled with OCs. I had to give names to some of Spencer's peers because they'd be recurring throughout, and some of them might help the plot along, but really one of the OCs will turn out to not be an OC at all...sort of. **

**It'll make sense later. Really.**


	3. Chapter 3

He started for the kitchen in the early evening, after his homework had been completed and put away nicely in his bag for later. Procrastination had been an issue for him throughout his entire academic career, but there just weren't any good reasons to put things off anymore. Why bother? He would still have to do the assignments, and it was a no-brainer that his best work wouldn't be happening late at night. What would he need to be doing other than homework, anyway?

Nothing, that was what.

The soft padding sounds of his socked feet ceased when he heard a voice. His sister laughed and replied. Grandad must have been back from the post-office, then. She knew better than to open the door for strangers.

"What letter is this?" came a muffled question from down the hall. His grandad loved to quiz her on the alphabet. She could even decipher letters out of his crude handwriting now, something _he _hasn't even mastered after getting birthday cards from him for seventeen years of his life.

"'C'," she declared with utmost confidence. Alphabet quizzes were just as fun for her because she knew they made her grandad radiant with joy.

"That's right. And this one?"

"'A'." No hesitation.

"'R'."

_That spells car, did you know that? C-A-R spells car. Let's learn a new word now, shall we?_

"'L'," she continued instead. Spencer tried to fool himself into thinking that Grandad wanted her to spell his middle name. It didn't last for long. The more she spelled, the weaker Spencer's knees got.

"'O,'"

He could smell citrus antiseptic, burning his nostrils like it was branded on their inside walls.

"T.'"

He thought of tubes. Tubes and pale skin stretched over fragile bone. Too fragile bone he always thought would break at the smallest touch, so he stopped, just stopped touching altogether after a long time. Look and don't touch, he used to think.

"T.'"

Monitors and wires which hooked to the skin that was fed by the tubes. Hash beep-beep-beeping all the time, every time he was there. He wanted them to stop.

"'A'."

One day, they did.

"Do you know what that spells?"

_Death_, he thought.

"Mommy," she said.

Silence was a knife, and it threatened to slit their throats. He hoped it was quick about it.

"That's your name too, pumpkin," came her broken reply, seeping melancholy like blood out of a fresh laceration. He turned back in the direction of his room because he didn't know why he'd left it anymore.

When it boiled down to it, his and his sister's answers had been pretty close to the same thing.

* * *

Lunch had become an almost tedious period. There was nothing to do except watch people, and they never changed. They always sat with the same people at the same tables, in the same _chairs_ even. So did he. People were boring, he had decided, because they were creatures of set habit who were averse to even the slightest changes in their plans. He had watched a freshman girl get bullied out of her seat the other day by a cluster of older boys just because, from what he had gathered, to keep her there would disrupt the lunchtime norm for them. The table was theirs, they'd said. She'd have to sit somewhere else.

He had mulled over how pathetic the situation was - not just for her, but for society - while biting into the bologna sandwich that was exactly the same as all the others he brought to school. It wasn't just the fact that nobody broke down the walls once in a while - it was that nobody _wanted_ to. Nobody cared, not even him, not even the freshman girl, not really. She had shrugged it off like she expected it and was invited by someone else to join another table and that was that. Hierarchy and social groups just _were_, and so, people thought, why try and change them?

"Hey, do you mind if I sit here?"

Spencer stopped his internal musing, his sandwich still raised up to his mouth. Thom Reed stood behind him and eyed the empty chairs surrounding him hopefully. Spencer wondered if he had been shunned from other tables, too, and then realized the irony of the whole situation. New kids were, upon their arrival, the ones who permeated social molds. They may not have known what those social molds were, but they still attempted to find their way into places where others might think they didn't belong, at least until they found a place they fit in.

He swallowed. "Go ahead."

"Thanks." Thom stepped around the table's edge and shimmied sideways until he could pull out the chair adjacent to Spencer and sit down. He was careful not to upset his Styrofoam tray in the process, which meant he obviously wasn't well-acquainted with the majority of Ridgeway cafeteria food yet. He'd learn eventually.

There was a stretch of silence in which they exchanged no words at all, and Spencer wished that society would find a way to put an end to awkward silences once and for all if they weren't willing to destroy social standards.

"So is this thing actually edible or not?" Thom asked, picking up and examining what appeared to be a malformed hamburger with a somewhat gray tinge.

"You can eat it, but I suggest if you experience sudden chills, nausea or hallucinations that you seek medical attention as soon as possible."

The meat patty was dropped out of his fingertips faster than either one of them could say 'ew' and landed with an all-the-more-unappetizing _plop _into its designated space on the tray before being pushed several inches to one side.

"I was just joking," Spencer assured him. "The food isn't going to hurt you. The people who came in after half the school was out with food poisoning made sure that everything served in this cafeteria is edible, at the very least." Which was the majority of the time.

Thom appeared to be waiting for the punch-line, but after several minutes of Spencer not offering one, he was visibly mortified.

"Please tell me the milk is safe."

"The milk is safe," Spencer told him.

Thom's eyes narrowed "You're not lying to me, are you?"

"Why would I?" Spencer wanted to know. "Killing off new kids isn't my thing."

He watched Thom check the expiration date and open the carton, which took more time than it should have as his eyes kept darting to him in near-accusation. It was getting to be a little much when he brought the container up to his nose and wafted the scent of the liquid toward him, though.

"It's _milk_, not a chemistry experiment."

"Well, given what you've said, it might as well be!" Thom put down the carton, exasperated. "How do I know it won't kill me?"

"Give it."

"Why?"

"Just give it."

He did. Spencer raised the carton to his mouth and downed a mouthful, careful not to backwash it or anything potentially disgusting like that.

"Safe," he affirmed, and slid it back.

"...That wasn't weird at all," Thom said after several seconds, peeking in at the liquid as though Spencer's saliva was a form of visible contamination before he seemingly decided it couldn't be that bad, sealed his lips around the opening and tried it himself.

"Okay. I believe you," he concluded, traces of milk clinging to his upper lip. Spencer shrugged, searched his head for something that would ease them into conversation. "How do you like it here?"

"It's...average," Thom said, like he was discussing the weather for the past week. "I didn't expect anything more or less. Now that my new kid novelty has kind of worn off, I'm not really talked to anymore. I guess I'm just not that interesting." His shoulders bobbed in resigned nonchalance. "It was the same way when I lived in Vancouver, so I'm kinda used to it."

The dismissal of the idea that he could have any social status at all sent a twinge of pity spreading through Spencer's chest. Popularity was never something he had been associated with, but at least people talked to him. Maybe not so much as of late (because everybody avoided grief and the grieving as though it were infectious), but still. He thought of jigsaw puzzles with bits and pieces put together, wide gaps in between the clusters, and it hurt.

"Well, I guess there _is _this one girl I talk to," Thom put in before he had time to respond. "She's in my cooking class. Lisa or Lizzie - something with an 'L'. I'm bad with names."

"Liza?" Spencer offered with a bit of effort. His mouth was dry; he drank from a water bottle that had been previously been tucked in his bag.

"Yeah, her." He nodded. "I talk to her a little sometimes, and she helps me not butcher things since I can't cook worth a damn, even by recipe."

"I used to be in cooking, but I decided to drop the class after I almost set the place on fire. I don't even know how that happened, since there was nothing in the frying pan."

Thom laughed. It wasn't a mean laugh, and he was doing his best to hide it behind his hand, but it was still annoying. Just because he had a reputation for making things spontaneously combust didn't mean people had a right to laugh at him all the time.

"It's not funny," he sneered, glowering despite himself.

"Okay, okay, geez. Lighten up, man." He gulped down the rest of his beverage, set it on the table with a hollow sound. "But, anyway. There's her and there's you and that's it."

"Oh," Spencer said. The syllable was drained, like someone had pulled the plug on his emotions and let them swirl down into nothingness. Thom was unbothered.

"It doesn't matter. I like you guys. Liza's talking can be a bit much - I've never heard somebody cram so many words into one breath before I met her - but she's funny and she's sensible, and that's always a great combination. Meanwhile, you're just..." He paused in his speaking, and Spencer felt a tingling sensation underneath his skin just being surveyed by his speculative gaze. "You're just you."

The bell rang. There was a tremendous scraping sound of chairs being shoved back and pushed into their proper places. Footfalls of hundreds of students built to a crescendo reminiscent of a stampede. Fleetingly, Spencer mused about how students were akin to lab rats, trained to jump at the sound of a bells and commands, expected to navigate through mazes in an accurate and punctual manner. But the majority of his fixation remained somewhere else.

"Thom," he called, watching him press past the masses of students making a break for the hallway. "Thom, what does that even mean?"

He caught sight of him, a flash of emerald meeting his eyes and indicating he had heard, and he shouted:

"You tell me, man. You tell me."

* * *

**AN: Short chapter is short, but it wouldn't work with me.**


	4. Chapter 4

When Spencer was five years old, his mother and his teacher had a conference. Back then, 'conference' was just a big grown-up word that meant they were going to talk about how he was doing in school, and they usually happened after those papers with his grades came in the manila envelopes he always needed signed and returned. His teachers would talk about his work, giving him those little pats on the back that made his insides feel like they were made of the fuzzies he would blow off dead dandelions in the spring, and then there'd be little reminders of what he needed to work on. _Your writing is a little messy, so try to slow down, okay?_

Conferences usually fell sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but one day his mother told him that he had to stay after school for one even though there were flowers coming out of the ground and he was getting that funny tickle in his nose from allergies more and more often. _But mommy_, he told her, _it's spring_. They went anyway.

He remembered sitting at his desk while his mommy and his teacher talked and how he couldn't even listen because his stomach was spinning like a washing machine and their questions made it worse. He kept tapping his foot and his teacher kept looking at him in a way that made him feel like he was shrinking in his chair. His mother didn't. When he wrapped his arms around her later, he didn't mind his smallness.

A week later, he went to the doctor, and after she asked him a million billion gazillion more questions, she decided he had to take medicine every day. His teacher liked him more after that, it seemed, since she wasn't always yelling at him to pay attention anymore and he didn't squeak his chair in that absentminded way that annoyed his classmates. He liked that, as long as nobody knew about the little pills he took with his breakfast.

Twelve years later, the memories of his ADHD diagnosis resurfaced with a vengeance. The memories of the events themselves were dim, but the anxiety which was weighted upon him as the minutes ticked by with speed that defied scientific law could not have been more exact to that very day.

Rick had casually sauntered up to him during class, just after the bell and just before anyone had started working and asked if he could see Spencer after the final bell for a bit. He'd said sure because he was agreeable and had no reason to lie about having other commitments - not that he could lie regardless. He had not begun to brood over Rick's request until there was about ten minutes left to class, and nostalgia came to him in the form of nervousness without any real cause. He pressed his back into his chair as if to stretch, when really he was just trying to tighten his muscles to stop himself from fidgeting. The metal end of his pencil tapped the surface of the table for several seconds before irony caught up with him, and he stopped. He stared at the clock instead. The hands moved slower under watchful eyes.

The signal of the end of the period just about jarred him out of his skin, and across the table, Thom's eyebrow quirked. He asked no questions, however, only said his goodbyes before slinging his backpack over his shoulder and continuing with the rest of his classmates. The room was soon empty, and there was no sound except for the ever-present buzz of florescent lights and the soft sound of Rick's brush strokes on canvas. Spencer found himself needing to pee, an unfortunate bodily reaction to tension that would only relieve itself (no pun intended) if he got a move on.

His footsteps were louder than he ever remembered them being as he made his way over to Rick.

"Just a sec," he said. Spencer nodded and observed him as he dabbed on bits of blue paint, the color of a cloudless sky. After standing back to admire his handiwork, he set the brush down, made himself comfortable in his desk chair with his legs crossed and his arms folded behind his head, and turned to Spencer. They stared at each other for a long moment.

"Spencer, do you happen to know why you're here?" Rick was not accusatory, just pensive, a little curious maybe, like he didn't quite know himself, and Spencer told him "Um, no I don't," even though there was this nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach that said he had a good idea.

Rick sat forward, his dress shoes clacking in that official way that shoes of professionals tended to do, and Spencer had a strong urge to back away even though he'd never had anything to fear in his art teacher's presence.

"I'm a pretty easygoing guy. I don't believe creative classes should be structured as a rigid environment, and I'm willing to leave students to their own devices as long as they're not fooling around. A lot of kids think I don't pay attention, but I notice things. I notice the little monkeys finger-painting in the back of the room, and I notice the way people draw war paint on each other with charcoal. I might not address these problems in front of everyone, but I _do_ address them. They know they get participation grades and that if they don't buck up they aren't going to do so hot, and there _will_ be other consequences for those of them who don't consider grades something to worry about.

"I also make sure to tell kids about good things, and I give tips and pointers to anyone who asks. I critique places where there's room for improvement. I've become familiar with the style of every person who works in my classroom...except for yours."

Rick tapped his fingertips against one another rhythmically, from his thumbs to his pinkies and back again.

"I like the idea of knowing what I can expect from my students, so I talked to some faculty members to see if maybe you were the type who coasted along on the bare minimum for grades. Maybe I'm just nosy, but it seemed worth questioning. I must say, I'm a bit confused." He blinked at Spencer, allowed a small pause in case he wanted to offer something before he continued.

"You're apparently a good student. You apply yourself. Your grades are satisfactory. Some of your teachers say you've done better this year than any years past and that you were difficult before. And you want to know how they defined difficult? 'He's always got to be playing with something'. 'He's always got drawings on himself from markers'. 'I was always confiscating his doodle paper'. Drawings? Doodle paper?" Rick's face was bewildered. "The most I've seen you do with paper so far this year is pick it up and stare at it. You don't even scribble or write your name over and over like some of your classmates - "

"That would be a waste of part of a tree," Spencer cut in with a soft voice.

Rick's mouth stayed slightly ajar as though he were about to go on speaking, but the sentence remained fragmented. "Spencer, I...I guess I don't know what to say other than I don't understand. Everyone I've talked to has said that art is your thing, but I've yet to see it proven because, quite frankly, you haven't done anything. Am I doing something wrong?"

Spencer swallowed. "No, Mr. Westfield - err, Rick. It's not anything you did. I guess it's me. I'm just not into art anymore. I know it's hard for teachers to put up with students who won't work, so I'm probably going to drop the class soon and just have a study hall or something. It's not worth staying if I can't get anything out of it."

"What makes you say you're not into art anymore?" Rick questioned after several seconds, rubbing the stubble on his chin. "People don't outgrow their hobbies over a summer, especially if they're big hobbies."

He shrugged. "It just doesn't have the same appeal it used to. Every attempt at art feels false and empty, like there's no feeling behind it."

"Is there?"

"I don't know. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel anymore."

There it came - a slip of his tongue, the ripping away of a scab in the process of healing. He inwardly winced, but didn't bother to cover it up. Rick's back straightened enough to be noticeable. They didn't exchange any more words for a long time. Spencer stared at the cracks in the floor, moved his foot against the sole of his shoe; he could feel a hole forming in his sock.

"Do you have any study halls in your schedule right now, Spencer?"

"I have one period three."

"Would you be interested in making a deal with me?"

"I guess. Have at it."

"I don't like the idea of you eliminating a course that you would supposedly enjoy just because you feel uninspired. Art can be a great outlet, and there are ways of getting out of these ruts." Rick's gaze was inviting as always, though tinted with something sad he couldn't name. "I want to help you get back on track. Will you try me?"

There was the distinct feeling of something lodged in his throat, and at some point it had become a task just to register what Rick was saying. But he managed to nod, and Rick pulled out a pass already signed and addressed to him. He must have been counting on his reaction.

"Give me some time to work with you before you decide what you want. If after a while you still don't like art, you can drop the class, okay?" Rick held out his hand for Spencer to shake. His hands were rough, but warm.

"I've probably kept you too long. I'm sorry. I just...I worry about things, you know?"

Spencer hefted his bag on his back, the corner of a book jabbing uncomfortably into his spinal column. "It's okay. Everyone's been like that since Mom died."

Recognition dawned on Rick's face. "Your mom...oh, Christ, I...I didn't..."

"I have to go," Spencer interrupted in the softest way possible. "My grandfather is probably wondering where I am." He reached down to tie his shoelaces, almost pitching forward under the weight of everything he was carrying.

(He never tied his shoes, not unless his grandad told him to.)

"Right." Rick's voice was strained. "I'll see you later."

When Spencer got outside the door, he ran. He ran so hard he felt as though he was blind and the feel of gravity and asphalt underfoot was the only thing confirming his existence. But the streets were familiar and his house was soon visible, and soon his senses had gone from dull to painfully sharp in an instant. Everything was bright, loud, assaulting.

"Where have you been?" his grandad nearly shouted upon his entry. Spencer almost collapsed in the doorframe.

"Had...to meet...with one of...my teachers," he panted. "Wanted...to talk to me...after school."

"Spencer!" His sister squealed, speeding over to him and holding her arms open for a hug. He curled his arms around her but didn't have time to murmur a hello before she jerked back. "Eww, you're all sweaty!"

Indeed he was. Now that she had pointed it out to him, he noted the unnatural, damp cling of his shirt against his chest and the beads of wetness rolling down his back. He apologized to her, but his eyes were on his grandad.

"What'd you do, run here?" He seemed shocked, and Spencer couldn't really blame him. He was the one who spent the prior year dreaming up every excuse possible to get out of PE.

"Yeah, I did. I'm gonna go take a shower now." He started for the stairs.

"Spencer?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not getting in trouble with your teachers, are you?"

He had to think a bit about how to respond to that.

"No," he said. "I don't believe so."

* * *

The Shay family had always been picturesque. Somewhere in his basement there were boxes, and in those boxes there were photographs of them in the early years of his existence in places he did not remember going to and having experiences that he told himself he remembered through the anecdotes of his relatives throughout the years. They were the literal epitome of 'picture perfect'; wide smiles and animated eyes, crisp, clean clothes and not a blemish in sight, not even when puberty began sifting through his hormones and replacing them with others that made his skin oily and acne-prone.

His mother was constantly taking pictures in the hopes of capturing her children at their best, and she never believed in sitting them still in front of a lens. Expressions were too forced, and emotions were too fictitious if staged, she was always trying to explain. The camera caught them instead when they least expected it - racing down a stairwell, or reaching for something in the cupboards. Sure, they may have ended up blurred around the edges with an arm or a leg out of the frame, but, she insisted, what she captured was real and raw, and the spontaneity of a flash allowed for most extraordinary things to emerge from what was plain and ordinary.

Spencer dared to contemplate what sort of emotions he would find if he were to photograph the scene in his kitchen. There was a stir-fry cooked up, and both his grandad and his sister had a plateful, but neither seemed to be eating - waiting for him, he guessed. His sister's legs swung back and forth in naive restlessness; she eyed her food gravely. There were far more vegetables in the dish than she would be willing to eat, but she sat in silence without complaint, ever the golden child. His grandad poked at his chicken, muttered something about it being undercooked. They were surrounded by empty chairs.

He coughed, and their heads turned. Grandad's wrinkled face bunched as he smiled, and Spencer wondered if it made the skin caught in the crevices feel pinched. His sister took his entry as a sign that she could eat.

"Hey, Spence. I made you a plate. I can warm it up if need be," offered his grandad as though he hadn't been operating a microwave since he was ten. He shook his head and speared some food onto a fork after he'd taken his seat. It was bland, with no distinctive flavor to the individual ingredients whatsoever.

'So how is school going for the two of you?' Ah, the guaranteed generic question of guardians everywhere. "Have you learned anything new or met anyone interesting?"

"I have! I'm learning how to write my name. I don't write it as good as Jenny, but that's okay 'cause I'm not as messy as Nick - his writing looks like scribbles, but I know it's not nice to say that to him..."

Why was talking so much easier at a young age? Spencer wanted to know. He was aware that at one time he was as much of a chatterbox as his baby sister, but one day there just ceased to be a plethora of words on the tip of his tongue, and he hadn't a clue where they vanished to.

"What about you, Spencer?" his grandad questioned after he had expressed his pleasure in the fact that his granddaughter was getting along so well in every area of her schooling so far. "Have you made any new friends?"

Spencer tried to inconspicuously fill his mouth to allot himself time to reply. Holding up his index finger to indicate that he needed a moment, he groaned inwardly. His grandad was always taking jabs at his lack of a social life, saying it wasn't normal for boys his age to spend so much time alone when he could be out and having fun with his peers. The glance that always came with such a statement never failed to give him a sense of wrong and abnormality.

He swallowed a few times like he wasn't sure the food had gone down and thought for a moment. "I still see Liza sometimes."

"Oh, yes, _Liza_. I remember her," he remarked as though it wasn't obvious by his tone of voice and the way his face lit up. "I wish you would still invite her over. I always liked her."

"Really," Spencer said, pushing some broccoli off to one side of his plate. His slight sarcasm went unnoticed. "We've kind of grown apart."

"It's really a shame." His grandad shook his head. "A crying shame. But surely you see more than just her in a day, someone else you're fond of."

"Well...I really like my art teacher this year. We think a lot alike."

"Good, good!" There were enthusiastic nods in reply. "But what about your classmates. Are there any of them you're getting to know?"

Spencer made an affirmative noise from behind the napkin he used to wipe speckles of soy sauce off his face. "There's a new kid in my art class - Thom. Thom Reed."

"Oh, yes? And what's he like?"

"He..." His sentence trailed off momentarily, and a voice inside his head mocked _has really intense eyes_. Shaking his head, he continued, "Well, he moved from Vancouver, and I think one time at lunch he mentioned that he lives with his mom and half-brother, but other than that, I don't know much about him. He seems okay, though."

The information, although limited, was enough to appease his grandad; there was a pleased sparkle in his grey eyes, and Spencer hadn't seen him beam at him that way in a long time. "Perhaps maybe when you two are a bit more familiar with one another, you can invite him up."

Spencer picked at his chicken, unsure of whether there was a hidden question in that suggestion. Somehow the idea made him anxious; he'd never had much for close friends and having not had many over to the house, he was certain things would somehow be different outside of an environment not dictated by a schedule.

"Maybe," he murmured. He wouldn't give an okay to anything that could be misinterpreted as a promise.


End file.
